2019•07•05     Samos

The Greek island of Samos, located in the Aegean Sea, welcomed the ninth edition of the Samos Summit on ICT-enabled Governance: Government 3.0, in conjunction with the 6th International Summer School on Open and Collaborative Governance. The event took place over 5 days (1-5 July 2019).

UNU-EGOV’s Soumaya Ben Dhaou and Demetrios Sarantis attended the summit, which offered an unprecedented opportunity to see, interact with, and influence cutting-edge Information and Communication Technologies research projects and initiatives. Attended by high caliber experts from research, administrations, and enterprises worldwide, the 2019 edition focused on the newest developments of ICT applications in the areas of digital governance, under the main headline Government 3.0 – Future Public Services – Legal Informatics – Digital Governance Science.

Specific focus in this year’s summit had been given to the following areas of ICT-enabled governance, aiming at delivering high-level insights on the new roadmap for research and practice:

• New technological evolution in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, Distributed Ledger Technologies, Bots and Agents, Data Mining, Internet of Services and Things, and more;
• New models and tools for advanced decision support in public policy-making, based on Big Open Data acquisition and processing, combining multiple forms of information;
• Smart Governance examples from all levels of public administration, uniquely combining societal citizens’ knowledge and effort with information systems;
• New epistemological approaches for the main elements of Government 3.0, such as ontological resources and definitions, neighboring scientific domains, taxonomies of research topics, training curricula, future roadmaps, and foresight.

Soumaya presented research work U4SSC: Blockchain for Cities and Communities, an initiative coordinated jointly with ITU, UNECE, and UN-Habitat in response to the Sustainable Development Goal 11 – Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. She also presented a lecture on e-Government and Sustainable Development. It explained how e-Government plays an essential role in implementing, follow-up, and review of the progress made in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. She analysed how to align and integrate the 17 SDGs into the e-Government strategy.

On the other hand, Demetrios presented a lecture in e-Government Assessment, which analysed the increasingly important topic of assessment and evaluation in e-Government. Different models, methodologies, and approaches have been introduced. Both UNU researchers participated in various workshops on the areas of:

• Legal Informatics Services, Challenges, and Ideas;
• Discussion on Training Needs about Entrepreneurship in Digital Government;
• Roadmap to Future Government;
• Science Base Creation in Digital Governance.